Blue Moon
by Man or Superman
Summary: Following the events of Smallville Season 3, Episode 2: Phoenix, the Kent family is forced to move when the bank forecloses their home. Thankfully, Martha's mother left her a house in Forks, Washington, which the Kents move to. Unfortunately, even in the sleepy town of Forks, Clark can't escape his destiny. Now if only he could stop floating every time he dreams of Alice Cullen...
1. Preface

**Disclaimer:** I do NOT own _the twilight saga_ franchise, Warner Brothers Entertainment, DC Comics, Superman, or the Smallville television series. _The twilight saga_ is copyrighted by Stephenie Meyer, Megan Tingley Books, Little, Brown and Company and Summit Entertainment. _Superman_ and the _Smallville_ television series is copyrighted by DC Comics, which is a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Entertainment. The only copyrights that I may claim to own are for original characters, themes and story plot lines. No copyright infringement was intended on my part. I wrote this story with only entertainment purposes in my mind, and have made no monetary gain off this work of fiction. Please do not sue me.

* * *

 _Blue Moon_

A Twilight and Smallville Crossover

By

 _Man, or Superman?_

* * *

 _Clark_

 **Preface**

* * *

The dim morning sunshine glittered around us like the beams of scattered rainbows. Her white, deceptively soft looking surface of her skin refracted the sunlight like a prism, almost like someone had decided to craft her beautiful figure out of diamonds. I knew that her skin was harder than granite, hard enough that I'd have to focus on hurting her to _really_ hurt someone of her kind…

Looking at her small, tempting body, you wouldn't have suspected that Alice Cullen was a monster, but her innocent, elfin figure and wide, innocent honey colored eyes was a lie. Alice Cullen was a monster, a cold blooded killer, a ravenous beast that yearned to sink her teeth into an unwary victim.

And…I loved her, with all my heart, forever.

Forks had become a trap of my own making. But I couldn't resent her for it. I couldn't imagine my life without her in it anymore. She was all that I thought about these days; she was my first thought when I awoke, and my last thought when I fell asleep beside her at night.

I was trapped, but I didn't mind.

Forks might have become a trap that I couldn't, and wouldn't even _try_ escape, but it was still _my_ home _…_

* * *

To Be Continued…?

* * *

Preview: "Clark: 1. Arrival"


	2. Arrival

**Disclaimer:** I do NOT own _the twilight saga_ franchise, Warner Brothers Entertainment, DC Comics, Superman, or the Smallville television series. _The twilight saga_ is copyrighted by Stephenie Meyer, Megan Tingley Books, Little, Brown and Company and Summit Entertainment. _Superman_ and the _Smallville_ television series is copyrighted by DC Comics, which is a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Entertainment. The only copyrights that I may claim to own are for original characters, themes and story plot lines. No copyright infringement was intended on my part. I wrote this story with only entertainment purposes in my mind, and have made no monetary gain off this work of fiction. Please do not sue me.

* * *

 _Blue Moon_

A Twilight and Smallville Crossover

By

 _Man, or Superman?_

* * *

 _Clark_

 **1\. Arrival**

* * *

I hadn't actually believed that leaving Smallville would have been so bittersweet. After my short rebellion in Metropolis, Chloe avoid speaking with me at length, wary that I might be on drugs, and my friendship with Lana was strained after she gave me her ultimatum and I rejected her. But Pete was Pete, if you could even call that an apt descript of your best friend. But there wasn't much I could say about him. With Pete, what you see fortunately tended to be what you get. He showed up to see my family off, and gave me an awkward one-armed man hug. Only when I rested for that night was I privately able to unashamedly admit that I'd miss him.

Heck, I'd miss Smallville, no matter how crazy the town tended to be. It still _was_ my hometown, though, and it was the only home I'd ever known.

But no matter my great powers, I couldn't just stop the bills from piling up. Even if I worked without rest and pulled the weight of a hundred men, I couldn't speed up the clock. Like all farmers, we had to wait for the harvest to earn out annual income.

Like many farming households, we harvested the land several times a year by spreading out our crops and strictly maintained a timetable for which batch of crops to grow and when. But this past year had been unusually hard on us; with the interference from alien powers and a miracle baby eating up a lot of our funds, we'd been scraping the bottom of the barrel well before I unintentionally destroyed a good portion of the farm in my useless effort to destroy the spaceship that carried me to Earth fifteen years ago.

I'd wanted to use my superpowers to supplement my family's income, but dad shot the idea down immediately. He was too proud, and felt that the right thing to do was for a man to grit his teeth and apply himself to honest work. But the bank didn't care for the reasons for our financial troubles, and we soon were sent and eviction notice to relocate.

Mom had been willed a house on the west coast from her long dead mother, which was still owned under her name in her name. Without any real options left, she finally remembered the quaint house in the rural town of Forks, Washington. We knew that it was probably run down, but since I was strong and fast and had sharp eyes, dad was willing to let me take on the majority of the repairs. That was the plan, anyway, but I didn't intend for him to have to lift a finger. I've already given them enough trouble to last a lifetime or two.

Granddad was pretty furious with my dad, and there were plenty of heated arguments long into the night when they thought I had gone to bed. Fortunately for dad, mom was still fiercely on his side, and wouldn't be swayed by her father. Even if she would have a better life if she sided with her father, away from dad and me, she adamantly refused. She said there was too much love in the Kent family for her to abandon us

As we said our goodbyes, I told Pete to tell Chloe and Lana that I was sorry that I wouldn't be able to patch things up and for all the trouble that I'd already caused them, even if they didn't want to hear it. Maybe after college I'd be able to find them again and properly reconcile unlike the shoddy way I'd already managed so far. I had every intention to return to Smallville, once I had the money to buy the farm back. The farm had been in the Kent's good name for generations before me, so I didn't feel right abandoning it even now when it meant so much to me. Having some familiar faces there to ease the change would be welcome.

I know dad wanted to return. The farm was as special to him as it was mom and me. But we had much bigger issues to worry about now. Since it would cost a small fortune to move our belongings and purchase even low class plane tickets, we loaded most of our valuables on the truck and sold everything that we thought that we could part with, which turned out to be about 90% of the farm.

Since it'd be cramped, riding in the cabin of the truck with my parents, they told me to hurry over to Forks and start on the repairs. Since I'd already decided to do everything that I could to make my parents feel welcome and content in Forks despite how significant the differences between the two small towns were, I was determined to have most or all the repairs that the house that we were moving into to be completed by the time my parents arrived.

Secrets were hard to keep in small towns, so I tried to avoid interacting with the locals. I'd brought most of the tools that I'd thought would be necessary to start on and complete the repairs for the old house, but when I needed something that I hadn't brought with me I'd take a trip to either the nearby city of Port Angeles or into Seattle if I was really desperate. As far as the neighbors were concerned, their anticipated new immigrants had hired on a repair company from out of town that came in early every morning and left late at night so that they didn't know who was responsible for the majority of the visible repairs.

For almost a full week I kept my mind and body with physical labor, secluding myself from the rest of the town. During that time, my parents kept me abreast of their progress cross country. My mom liked to keep me up at night, getting me to tell her every microscopic detail about the repair work, my diet and how I was getting on with the neighbors. I avoided speaking in depth where I could, and answering in vague tones that conveyed my desire to change the subject. Dad usually saved me then, taking the phone from my mom and speaking to me quietly. I was thankful for his stoic reassurance; I knew he'd not even be half as willing to abandon Smallville if it weren't for the still painful loss of his legitimate biological child. The pain was still fresh on all our minds.

Sometime early that Sunday morning my parents arrived in the truck, which I helped them unpack and sort our belongings. This was the first chance that our neighbors had gotten to get a look at us, peeking out from window blinds and over the top of close cut, very green hedges. Inevitably, one of them chose to investigate by approaching us physically.

One of our neighbors was the police chief of the small town. He was tall, and dark haired with hard brown eyes, and moved awkwardly on his feet as if he wasn't really comfortable in his own skin. Apparently, every single member of his family had two left feet. In a strange quirk of fate, he vaguely reminded me of dad.

He introduced himself as Charlie Swan, one of only a few acting officers in the town.

From what he said, he had an ex-wife and a daughter that lived in Arizona, and who had all but avoided coming to Forks for the last three years.

But he was a good man. He didn't pry too heavily into our lives, just asking general questions about where we were from and why we'd left. My parents answered him simply but honestly, trying to keep their stories contained to the bare minimum of detail but still hold a source of truth underneath all the half truths.

I didn't talk to him to him personally, but I overheard him asking if I'd be joining the rest of my age group at the high school. They agreed that I would, and that I'd start with the new term. I didn't bother fighting the matter, since I knew how important it was to keep up the illusion that I was a normal boy and that we were an average family from the mid west.

Charlie seemed pleased, and gave directions to a nearby Native American reservation that he'd thought I'd like since it was apparently popular with the teenage demographic. Forks didn't have a lot of options for teenagers to choose their entertainment; it was either the beaches in the La Push reservation or the shops and sole theater in Port Angeles, which was a significant distance from Forks compared to even La Push.

They conveyed interest in the subject, which I interpreted that they were worried about me falling into another depression. It was touching, but I was childishly annoyed with their interference.

Even if I understood that it wasn't healthy to avoid any social interaction, that's exactly what I ended up doing the following week. The house that we'd moved to was small, so I ended up making a room for myself in the attic, which I spent the majority of my time brooding in. In the days that followed, I'd find myself sitting in my only chair, a rickety old rocker that I situated beside my window, looking into the cloudy sky.

It rained a lot in Forks, which I'd already known. But I hadn't really thought that I'd be hit with melancholy as badly as I had. I slept a lot, and when I awoke I was so moody that I chose to avoid my parents entirely.

I'd randomly suffer from bouts of fatigue and exhaustion, but that Saturday I more or less recovered. Mom worried that I'd caught something that could affect even my alien physiology, but dad's maintained composure was comforting enough that we didn't seek to contact Dr. Vergil Swan, who was probably the only person on the planet that we could trust to exam my body for illness.

But I eventually recovered, and on the Sunday following my recovery I decided to explore the rest of the small town. It was a rare sunny day, and I felt unusually energetic under the familiar warm rays of the sun. I decided to investigate La Push, which Charlie had recommended, arriving as crowds began to arrive at the entrance of First Beach.

Several groups of the teenagers from the Reservation were already there waiting, which I believed was due to the absolute lack of entertainment in both Forks and La Push. I'd done a quick scan of the reservation while heading to the beach, and I saw that they were only lucky enough to have a single coffee shop which they shared with a bakery. Though La Push was bigger than Forks and lucky enough to have a few interesting shops, they weren't _much_ bigger than Forks and most of the shops in La Push were bakeries or places for tourists to buy souvenirs, which most teenagers wouldn't really find useful for entertainment reasons.

Of course I knew that I'd be recognized. News tended to travel fast in small towns like Forks, and even in Smallville which was about double the size of Forks, everyone knew who was dating who or which families were feuding. But gossip was the nature of small towns like Forks and Smallville.

Plus, I'd probably be a hot topic for the simple townsfolk; I was the only son of a couple of farmers and avoided leaving the house. They'd probably think that I was a troubled youth that didn't want to connect, or suffering from homesickness, or even that I was lame or retarded and stayed at home so that my family could care for me.

Even if none of it were true, people would gossip.

Naturally, teenagers being teenagers, the sight of the tall and dark stranger standing on the shore of the beach caught a lot of attention. The fact that I was the mysterious and reclusive son of Mr. and Mrs. Kent would be extra incentive to investigate.

Not for the first time in my life, I despised my strange, alien biology. I'd been short and baby faced in my early years of puberty, but in the summer between my 8th grade year and my freshmen year of high school, I'd shot up like a beanstalk. When I'd stepped into Smallville high that year everyone knew that puberty had struck, and struck _hard_.

But I was _big_ , and freakishly so at that. The summer before my freshmen year I'd barely stood taller than five feet, but when I started I was a little over six feet and about a hundred pounds heavier with muscle. To say I stood out was a gross understatement. I'd never been so afraid to go to school since I'd first started back when I was five.

But now I was even bigger, growing an inch or so every year and putting on a few dozen more pounds of raw muscle. By now I was so heavily that I had to watch how I sat on chairs; most chairs were made either from cheap plastic or wood, and five hundred plus pounds of alien muscle tended to be more than they could endure.

I'd adopted the habit of slouching and wearing clothing several sizes bigger than me. When you slouched and adopted shy mannerisms, people tended to perceive you as shorter than you were. With clothing several sizes bigger than me, large enough that they hung off my body in great folds of cloth and denim, people would think that you were skinnier than you were.

Using personality and fashion to my advantage, I could subtly make people think that I was just tall and lanky instead of just being _massive_ like I really was.

Unfortunately, that had the tendency of getting me labeled as a nerd even without the stereotypical coke bottle glasses and the horrible acne and braces.

It was one of the girls that approached me first. She was tiny, shorter than even Chloe, who was one of the shortest girls that I personally knew, with dark curly hair that seemed to make up for her height deficiencies, and had pale and freckled skin that she showed off with her barely decent two piece swim suit. But I still thought she was pretty.

"Hi, I'm Jessica Stanley," the girl introduced herself, giving me a once over and a wide, appreciative smile as we shook hands. "I've never seen you before in town, are you visiting?"

"My family and I just recently moved into Forks," I explained habitually, trying to maintain eye contact with the girl because I was both uncomfortable with how close she was standing next to me and because the two piece swimsuit that she was wearing looked more like a bikini than what I believed would be comfortable in the chill waters of a Washington coastal town. "I'm Clark Kent, I'm pleased to meet you Miss…?"

She seemed to appeal to my soft tone of voice and polite words, her pale cheeks flushing rather attractive as she demurely brushed her damp, brown bangs out of her eyes and fluttered her eyelashes.

"So you're Clark Kent," she greeted with interest. I fought a smile. It seemed that I was expected. "Does that mean that you'll be joining Forks High?" I could hear the anticipation in her voice.

I nodded. "Yeah, I'll be joining once the break ends," I admitted. She seemed ecstatic at the clarification.

"Oh, I'm sorry Clark! Would you like to join my friends and me for the day? We could totally show you around! You must be lonely, moving to a new town and everything," she suggested imperiously. I smiled, glad that I'd managed to keep up with her babbling.

"By all means, Miss Stanley," I motioned for her to lead on, and followed her as she led me back to her friends from the local high school.

"Hey guys, I'd like you all to meet Clark Kent! Go easy on him, he's new in town," she introduced me, winking at some of the other girls in the group. A very pretty blond and a few other girls that surrounded her giggled excitedly, sending me predatory glances and suggestive smiles. Most of the guys though seemed to take it all in stride, though the tall boy with the short and spiky blond hair frowned in annoyance as I sat down beside him.

"Hello," I greeted the group softly once I was seated amongst them. I could see that the group had started a driftwood fire that crackled with green flames from all the saltwater it was soaked with.

One of the other boys, who had a bad case of acne, leaned towards me with an eager grin. "Hey man, my name is Eric, Eric Yorkie. I'm on the school paper with Angela," he indicated a tall, dark haired girl, and then moved onto a shorter boy with Asian features, "And Ben. Not a lot of people are interested in moving to Forks though, so we don't see a lot of new students…so, scoop?" he suggested with a grin and a wink.

"Huh," I leaned in with obvious interest, "Would there be an opening in the newspaper club?" As I'd expected, the group was surprised by my eagerness. That wasn't so surprising to me; in the clothing that I was currently wearing, I looked more like a jock than a paper nerd. Deciding to ease them, I grinned sheepishly, ducking my head to make me seem a little embarrassed at my hobby. "I uh…had a friend who was the editor of the paper…"

"Really, what section did you work on?" the girl, Angela asked with sudden interest. Obviously, the paper was more important to her than Eric. I felt an immediate kinship with the girl.

I attempted a smile, but it felt slightly strained on my face.

"I wrote for sports, mostly, though I would fill in for my friends if they were busy with something else, and sometimes we all worked on stories together," I explained easily. It was the standard reply that I'd given plenty of times since I started high school. So there wouldn't be any hint of deception.

"I really don't see it," the boy with blond hair pointed out, and I saw several of the other teenagers murmured agreement. "You look more like you belong out on the football field than with the nerds," he said honestly, which wasn't surprising. I fought back a grimace at the reminder.

"Yeah, but my family owned a farm before we were forced to move here, and football takes a load of time out of my schedule that I could have been helping out at the farm. That was a pretty big deal, since we couldn't afford too many hired hands, so I had to pitch in on my family's farm as much as I could."

"But why…?" the pretty blond girl made a vague gesture. I smiled easily though, understanding what she meant.

"In my old school, club activities or joining a school sport's team were required extracurricular activities. Most of my classmates who couldn't make it on a sport's team ended up joining the newspaper club though, at least until they managed to earn the required credits, because the only other clubs were drama, chess and computers…at least with the newspaper club I had friends there with me…" I explained.

"Geese," the blond boy shivered in disgust, "I can't imagine. Considering those options, I think that I'd pick newspaper club too if I couldn't make it on a sport's team…"

I shrugged in apathy. "Well, we only really had the swim team, the football team and the baseball team at my old school…" I reasoned. A collective shudder went through the group.

"I honestly thought there couldn't be a town worse than Forks," Jessica gave a horrified shudder. "But at least here we have a pretty decent selection of clubs and sports to occupy all our free time…"

"Which is about the only thing we have," Eric pointed out. Another collective shiver of disgust passed over us.

"So far, it doesn't seem too bad," I said softly, drawing looks of disbelief from the other students. Flushing sheepishly, I explained tentatively, "Well, at least your crime rate seems pretty low in comparison to my hometown…"

"Oh yes," said the blond with obvious derision at the argument, "Let's all be thankful that we can't even host a party without getting the chief Swan on our case, or that it's pretty much impossible to even sneak a beer or two to liven things up…" she drawled. I gave her a hapless shrug and a rueful smile in reply.

"At least the homicide ratio seems lower," I said softly. A hush fell over the group my words.

"That…sounded pretty cryptic," the Asian boy, Ben commented with a frown. The rest of the group seemed to silently agree.

"Were there…a lot of murder cases…in your hometown?" Angela hesitated to ask. I paused to consider how to reply, then gave the tiniest of nods.

"There were…a few. After Lex Luthor moved into my hometown two years ago, which I can honestly confess is first I can recall that all our troubles started," I gave them a simple reply. That was true enough, though I'd obviously not divulged the whole truth to my new acquaintances. Even if I could trace back majority of Smallville's troubles to me, I was lucky that it hadn't gotten that bad until Lex had rolled into town. For a moment, I wondered why…

"Ah, man," Eric groaned, scrubbing at his bangs furiously, "Tough break, fella. At least you won't have to worry about any crazies here, right?" he tried to lighten the grim mood. He seemed like the kind of guy that would try to cheer anyone up with a joke, even at his own expense.

I attempted a smile, but really couldn't put my heart in it. Somehow I just knew that I'd never really be free of homicidal mutants and alien threat. If these past two years of my high school life in Smallville were indicative about what the rest of my life would be like, than any normal life that I might have had was already doomed before it could even begin.

"Its okay, Clark," Jessica tried to sooth me, patting at my exposed knee sympathetically. "I don't even remember the last murder in Forks. Does anyone, really?" she asked, looking around our circle. Almost everyone agreed with nods of their heads of dismissive shrugs and rolls of their eyes.

Jessica turned her attention back to me and smiled, "Just you wait and see," she winked.

Things settled after that particularly grim conversation. We talked for a while longer, trading a few stories about the two towns that we all felt were appropriate. The three teenagers from the newspaper club seemed interested in hearing about Chloe, and my work in the Torch, so I agreed to stop by and take a look at the Newspaper Club. It was my junior year, anyways, so I might as well add onto my current journalistic experience before college.

Mike and a few boys were interested in some of my misadventures in Smallville, or all the horror stories that I had to tell about the meteor infected. Since it wouldn't due to hint at all the supernatural activities that happened in my hometown, I tried to downplay the danger and avoid any mention of super powers and mutations.

The girls in the group were more interested in the kind of movies, books, and music that I liked, and a few were even interested in the Chloe and Lana, who I had been friends with for years.

Once all the good weather ended with the dark storm clouds filling the sky, we parted ways while agreeing to keep in touch. I left La Push with several new phone numbers programmed into my cell phone, and returned to my new house to have a brief, quiet lunch with my parents.

True to my word, I kept in touch with the group of teenagers that I'd met at La Push beach. We usually went down to La Push when the weather was good, sometimes swimming and other times trying our hand at sports like volleyball or soccer. When the weather was bad, though, I usually split my time between seeing some action movies at the Port Angels cinema or shopping for books and clothing with Jessica, Angela and the rest of the girls.

My parents quickly found a place in the community. Charlie helped my dad get a job on the police force as a dispatcher because of his heart, and my mom found a job at the only bakery in La Push.

Forks just so happened to be a two restaurant town and single grocery store kind of town, and La Push was a decently bigger in comparison, so the Reservation fortunately had a coffee shop that shared space with their own bakery.

I took a part time job at the grocery market as a stocker, since it was some of the only kind of jobs that I could find as a strong and tall adolescent male. My work ethic was exemplary, impressing my boss. I never complained about my coworkers or my boss, was overly helpful to the customers, and could accomplish the same amount of work that two men my size and age could in half the time.

On the weekend, dad and mom would join Charlie either at his house or at the Clearwater residence. I'd met the Blacks and the Clearwaters, or at least I'd met the elders of the two Quileute families. From what Charlie claimed, the Swans had always had close ties with the resident of the Quileute tribe.

None of the men of the three families could cook, but they all liked their fish fry, so my dad would join Charlie, Billy and Harry at a near by river every Saturday and spend all day fishing. On Sundays, my parents would join the fish fry with the three other families, and would usually head over to either Charlie's house or the Clearwater's house, where mom and Mrs. Sue Clearwater would cook up the fish that the men had caught the previous day.

I'd only met Jacob Black briefly; he was Mr. Billy Black's son, whom I had met when they'd stopped by our house on the way to the market one day towards the end of summer. Dad had called me down and introduced me to Billy's son, Jacob, who was apparently going through a growth spurt and stood about half a foot shorter than I did, which was pretty impressive in itself.

We'd shaken hands and exchanged pleasantries, before Billy got me to promise to visit La Push at some point in the future. I knew that he had two daughters, which were only a couple of years older than me, and he'd hinted to possibly inviting his eldest daughter back home for Thanksgiving. He gave me the impression that he liked me a little _too_ much and that he and my parents were thinking about playing matchmaker.

Despite my rather active social life, I never volunteered to go out with the local teenage demography. When I had the time, I usually spent it up in the attic which was now pretty much fully converted into my room, texting Pete and learning what Chloe and Lana were doing. I'd had to resort to this method, since Chloe and Lana either avoid answers my calls or text messages or were outright hostile whenever they answered.

Despite how friendly all the townsfolk were I still felt very lonely. My parents definitely noticed my subdued depression, and subtly tried to get me to open up and be more adventurous, but I struggled to find the motivation.

Finally, the end of the summer break was in sight, and with it was the promise of the sweet, monotonous release of the new school year. Most kids my age would have dreaded the coming year, but schoolwork was actually kind of relaxing to me.

It wasn't because I wanted to challenge my mind with a mountain of schoolwork like a number crunching mathematician nerd would have, but school was familiar to me, and since I could breeze through most schoolwork while only paying it the minimum amount of my attention, school was more of a release for me. The monotony of it was relaxing, since while in school I didn't have to focus on all the troubles that still awaited me back at home and in my real life.

I missed Pete, and Chloe, and Lana, and Lex. I missed the farm, and the wide open fields of gently swaying corn stalks, and the dry, blistering winds. I even missed the near constant threat of alien interference that would await me back in Smallville.

Smallville was home, and despite how welcoming Forks was to me, it just didn't feel right. It didn't fit me like my hometown did. It was sort of live trying on a new boot while which didn't feel as comfortable as the old, worn in one that had already conformed to the shape of your foot after many years of faithful service.

I should have realized that the monotony wouldn't last, and that I'd soon have new worries…

* * *

To Be Continued…?

* * *

Preview: "Clark: 2. Cold"


	3. Cold

**Disclaimer:** I do NOT own _the twilight saga_ franchise, Warner Brothers Entertainment, DC Comics, Superman, or the Smallville television series. _The twilight saga_ is copyrighted by Stephenie Meyer, Megan Tingley Books, Little, Brown and Company and Summit Entertainment. _Superman_ and the _Smallville_ television series is copyrighted by DC Comics, which is a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Entertainment. The only copyrights that I may claim to own are for original characters, themes and story plot lines. No copyright infringement was intended on my part. I wrote this story with only entertainment purposes in my mind, and have made no monetary gain off this work of fiction. Please do not sue me.

* * *

 _Blue Moon_

A Twilight and Smallville Crossover

By

 _Man, or Superman?_

* * *

 _Clark_

 **2\. Cold**

* * *

No one could claim that Forks was a big town. It seemed even more synonymous with the idea of a small town than even _Smallville_.

As an example, I could run between it, and its two neighboring towns, La Push and Port Angeles in the same time it would take me to run the full length of Smallville from each of its borders.

Naturally I wasn't honestly surprised by that fact; small towns were usually smaller when they weren't agricultural towns. Towns like Smallvile tended to be bigger than they needed to be because so much of its land was needed for farming purposes.

The Kent farm had actually been one of the bigger farms in the town, which was probably why we had been better off even in bad seasons. Smallville had been first settled by the Smalls with other pioneers that had grown into the founding families, such as the Kent family. But the Smalls had sold their properties to their neighbors after many generations of good fortune and even greater riches. My family just happened to purchase a good deal of the land on sale over several generations.

None of that really mattered any more. For better or worse, Forks was now my home. But what really made me sick to my stomach was the actions that had forced my family to move to Forks, Washington in the first place; I'd not only cost my parents their home, but I'd cost them their unborn child, the little miracle baby that would have grown to be my little brother or sister.

Sometimes when I remembered these things, I'd wish that I'd died in the explosion that I destroyed the spaceship that had brought me to Earth, and that had destroyed much of our farm and made my mother experience her miscarriage and all the pain that came with it.

Unfortunately, we'd soon enough discovered that Jor-El, or at least the artificial intelligence copy of his personality and memories was still hanging around. Somehow he'd managed to transfer his consciousness to the Granville Kawatche caves. I didn't know all the details, but he was apparently the reason why I had been forced to return to the Kent family.

While I was rebelling against my father and terrorizing Metropolis during the early summer break after the disastrous end to my sophomore year, my parents had grown increasingly desperate over the weeks that I was gone. So much so, that my dad had felt compelled to seek out Jor-El in the Kawatche caves and receive a Kryptonian power up that allowed him to confront me even under the effects of Red Kryptonite.

But that was over now. Even if I was wary of this mysterious "deal" that my dad had made with Jor-El, my alien father couldn't touch me here in Forks, even more so because I'd somehow erased his mark from my chest that made me experience untold agony if I didn't submit to his will.

Even if I still missed Smallville and all my friends, I'd still be grateful for the chance to escape my biological father's thumb. Halfway across the country seemed a little far out of his metaphorical reach.

I'd only gotten away with running everywhere I needed for about a week before my parents put their foot day, figuratively speaking. Even if I knew that I was stronger and faster and that they had no real way to force me to do something, I didn't really have the will in me to rebel against their arguments, Red K not withstanding.

I very well knew how lucky I was to have them. Not very many couples could cope with having a super powered teenage alien for an adopted son, after all. Even if you removed all the weekly meteor infected confrontations, and my antagonist relationship with my alien heritage, I'd still put them through a lot of unnecessary pain over the years that they could have avoided by abandoning me to Lionel Luthor's or the military's not-so-tender mercies.

Needless to say, I was immensely grateful for my parents…and ashamed.

Not of them, certainly, but myself, and what I'd put them through over the years.

So when my parents confessed a desire to see me try harder to blend in with the rest of Fork's population, I acquiesced to their demands. Since I still had a lease on the portable storage unit that I'd left my father's motorcycle in back in Metropolis, I returned to Kansas the Saturday before school began and returned to Forks with it carried over my shoulders as easily as if it were my backpack.

The bike had needed a good polish and oiling for the engine, and we had to inflate the tires again since they'd gone flat, but it was serviceable and I had a vehicle to ride to school.

It'd only taken all of Sunday for me and my dad to fix up the bike. My mother wasn't too pleased that I'd be riding it as my main transport, but we didn't really have too many options that we could be picky about this kind of thing, so she'd reluctantly accepted the need for it.

It wasn't like I'd be injured if I _somehow_ managed to crash.

Since I'd either been carpooling or getting dropped wherever I needed to be up till then, I figured that I'd surprise a lot of people showing up on my dad's Harley Davidson.

It was raining that Monday as I got dressed for school. Because I didn't feel like walking around my new school while wearing soaked clothing, I threw on my old leathers and denim and a plain black parka that I'd picked up the very first week we'd officially moved into Forks, and then I drove over to the school.

My dad's bike was old, and didn't really look out of place sitting next to the second or third hand cars, vans and trucks that most of the students and teachers owned. Really, the only reason why it was unique was that it's powerful engine was obnoxiously loud and it had the unfortunate luck of being the only motorcycle in the whole town.

In fact, the only vehicles that stood out more than my dad's bike were a shiny new silver Volvo and a monstrously huge jeep that honestly felt was trying, and failing rather splendidly at imitating a domestic vehicle.

Shaking my head at the absurd sight, I parked close to the office and went through the motions to lock my bike to a flag pole and remove theft proof the thing. Afterwards, I headed into the office introduce myself to the receptionist and gather my timetable and wave off the usual offer for a mentor to guide me to my classes.

The interior of the office was warm and dry, which I was thankful for. Even if I didn't feel temperature like a human, I didn't like being drenched down to my denims.

The room was very small, and felt even smaller than it was to me since as was just so much bigger than a normal male my age. The carpet was hideous and cringe worthy orange, and someone had obviously thought it would be a splendid idea (it wasn't) to hang potted plants from pretty much every nook and cranny in the room to give it a little complementary color (really, it wasn't).

The receptionist was a small woman with a large shock of curly red hair and coke bottle glasses that made her eyes look much bigger than they actually were. She was dressed very casually in a purple T-Shirt that was a little light for this climate, and a nametag that claimed she was a Mrs. Cope.

The door banged loudly behind me as I stepped through, but I ignored it as I approached the desk, clearing my throat.

"Excuse me, ma'am, I'm Clark Kent and I'm here to collect my timetable," I introduced myself as politely as I could, flashing her a smile that would hopefully ease any tensions between us.

Mrs. Cope looked up, and up, and up, and startled as she _finally_ got a good look at my face. I glanced over her worriedly, but she'd already gathered herself, and was shuffling through her desk purposely in an attempt to ignore my searching eyes with a slight pink stain on her cheeks.

"Yes, of course," she agreed breathlessly, and removed a single sheaf of paper which she handed to me. I go the feeling that I wasn't what she'd expected, but that seemed to be the usual reaction that I got from most people.

I'd never thought my height was all that strange before we moved to Forks, because all my neighbors and friends back in Smallville had seen me through during all my awkward and _very_ sudden growth spurts, but I now knew that was freakishly tall for a seventeen year old schoolboy.

During my Summer long rebellion the month before we moved to Forks I had had plenty of older women hit on me, that had initially thought I was somewhere in my late twenties from my height, frame and facial features.

In Forks that fact wasn't so much a problem since everyone knew that the son of Mr. Jonathan and Mrs. Martha Kent looked older than he really was, but it still surprised everyone I'd meet just how much _older_ I looked than my actual age.

Mrs. Cope probably thought that I was either an uncle or an older brother to one of the students when she'd looked up. Considering that, I chose to be sympathetic and ignore her embarrassment, scanning over my timetable and trying to figure out where I needed to head first by comparing the room numbers for my classes to the map that Fork's High had sent me two weeks ago that I'd already memorized.

I felt pretty confident that I could find my classes without incident. Forks High School was almost the size of Smallville High, with a similar student population size. But the designs of the two schools couldn't be any more vastly different if one was hosted on mount Olympus and the other in Atlantis under the deep, dark Atlantic Ocean.

I thanked Mrs. Cope and retreated from the office, heading back to my father's parked bike and after unchaining it, I wheeled it over to a nearby unrestricted parking space.

Unlike Smallville, it seemed that I didn't need to apply for a permit to park my motorcycle. After I was parked, I chained it to a huge, sturdy oak that stood taller than the school itself, and took the final precautions to prevent a theft.

But that point, the rest of the parking lot was filling with students, and a check my wristwatch said that I only had a few brief minutes to get to class. So slung my backpack over my shoulder, and stuffed my hands into my coat and shuffled back across the parking lot to the front doors.

Partway there, I heard someone call my name, and when I turned my head to investigate I was greeted with the sight of Jessica, Angela, Ben, Eric and Mike waving in greeting. I returned the gesture, smiling, and motioned to the doors. They converge with me halfway to the front door, and we quickly caught up from when we'd spoken last.

The others were returning students and had planned the courses that they'd take this year in their pervious year, so they'd ended up receiving their timetables over the summer, which I already knew by heart, so I knew without needing to compare with them that I shared a few classes with Jessica, Mike, Ben, and Angela.

Somehow I'd ended up in Gym with Mike, which he seemed to be excited about. Considering I athletic I looked, he'd been anxious to really test my capabilities since we'd first met. I also got the feeling that he was anxious to tryouts to begin.

Sports seemed as big in Forks as in Smallville.

I was also sharing a few honors classes with Angela, most particularly my junior year Calculus, plus I'd ended up taking Biology and Spanish with Jessica, since I hadn't had the chance to learn the foreign language in Smallville.

Angela and I met Ben in Calculus, where we traded small talk as I shared a granola bar with the two because they hadn't had the time for breakfast before school.

After the tardy bell rang, the teacher sorted the students into assigned desk, and I ended up taking a seat next to a pale boy with bronze colored hair that leaned towards red in my eyes, with a very handsome face.

He introduced himself to me as Edward Cullen in a subdued voice, but didn't offer much else than that. So I relayed my name, and we lapsed into a companionable silence as the class officially began for the year and we had to review the Syllabus.

Not much was actually covered in our first day of class. The teacher gave a pop quiz that made the majority of the class groan in disgust. I had to resist the impulse to breeze through the material, forcing myself to actually take my time to contemplate the questions so that I at least appeared to be struggling with the material like our classmates in case my neighbor happened to be watching.

Out of my peripheral vision I saw that Edward's dominant hand smoothly gliding over his quiz paper, not even pausing to consider each individual question like our classmates were. If my cursory glance didn't tell me that all his answers were absolutely correct, I probably would have thought that he was doodling instead of attempting to answer the questions on his quiz paper.

But he noticed my look, frowning thoughtfully, intentionally slowing how quickly he was answering his quiz. Even if I didn't understand _why_ he was trying to hide his obvious genius level intelligence, I respected his right to privacy and turned away, turning my attention back to my own quiz.

"How do you like Forks, so far, Mr. Kent?" Edward asked softly. I glanced up, taking in his severe expression, before returning to my quiz and carefully increasing my own pace to give any observers the impression that I'd finally warmed up to the material.

"It's quiet," I said with an amused smile on my lips. Edward gave a sniff that I translated to be amusement, so I elaborated, "My hometown had a lot of trouble with teenagers fighting, and my friend Chloe kept me busy by investigating any mysterious criminal cases that had to do with our school or our neighbors…"

Edward's eyes widened imperceptibly, though it wasn't in surprise, but more like interest. "Why would you? Was there something special about the circumstances behind the deaths?" his intrigue was palpable.

I nodded, taking note that he was purposely matching the speed of my penmanship so that he never answered a question faster than I did, or if he did than it would seem random to make it more believable to an observer.

"Yeah, they were murders," at the answer, I rolled my eyes to convey a suitable amount of skepticism. "My friend Chloe was kind of a conspiracy theorist, and she often involved me and my friend Pete Ross to help her investigate why a good portion of the town's population seemed to have grown homicidal."

"Sounds horrible," Edward commented dryly, and we lapsed back into silence. I was now convinced that he was monitoring how fast I answered the questions on my quiz, and for a fleeting, paranoid moment I suspected that he'd somehow discovered my alien origins.

But then I noticed that any time I suddenly changed my writing speed that he'd either pick up his writing speed to match it or slow down, which I didn't understand.

I figured that with how pale he was that he must be something of an introvert and spend a lot of time indoors with only books to keep him company.

I didn't really know why he'd want to hide how intelligent he must be for the material to come to him as easily as it did to me, but I wasn't motivated to pry. He was entitled to his secrets. Far be it from me to begrudge him that right.

"That's because it was," I said grimly. Edward nodded thoughtfully.

"Did they catch the person, or people responsible for the murders?" Edward inquired. I considered how best to answer his question, doodling a few alternative methods to answer the next question on my quiz idly.

"Sometimes, yeah, but a lot of those cases went unsolved, and I think a lot of us were glad to forget those particular cases," I said evasively, and I knew a little suspiciously, but I had to draw the line on the questions that I answered.

"I understand, ignorance is its own blessing," Edward chuckled good-humoredly, and gave an unrepentant shrug when I glanced at him. "For some reason I'm feeling very optimistic about this year…"

"Is that so," I said noncommittally, quirking my lips into a sardonic smile.

"So, do you feel homesick?" Edward asked slowly. I nodded.

"A little; even if Smallville wasn't perfect, it was still home…" I agreed. He nodded in solemn agreement, offering a sympathetic smile.

"I'm sure it was…"

There wasn't much else to the class besides a few short exchanges of small talk. Edward was a witty, cynical boy, and kept his dry humor restrained most of the time, but we got along fairly well.

After class, I followed Ben and Angela who had taken it upon themselves to help me find my next class (not needed, by the way), they conveyed how unusual it was for any of the foster children of Dr. Carlisle Cullen to pursue a conversation with anyone, even their own lab partners.

Their amazement was shared by Jessica who met us at the door to my next class, and was the only one to join me for Biology. She gossiped about Edward and the Cullens for most of the class, and from the bitter tone of her voice I understood that Edward had most shot down any of her advances.

In my next class, which Jessica walked me too, hanging on my arm like a lost puppy while maintaining a constant babble, we greeted Eric who'd be joining me for my Government class.

He, too, was amazed how I had seemingly maintained a friendly, constant conversation with a member of the by now mysterious Cullen family. But unlike Jessica, Angela and Ben, he wasn't content to think that the whole situation was a fluke.

Under his promptly, he urged me to greet the only two Cullens that who share the class with us. Before the class began, I'd been forced to step up to the long black table that Rosalie Hale and Emmett Cullen shared, introducing myself politely with an apologetic smile.

Rosalie greeted me candidly, but Emmett cracked a grin at my discomfort and asked me about my diet, listing off a conspiracy theory of his about growth hormones in the Kansas corn stocks that would have had Chloe grinning both amusement and intrigue.

I returned remark about being raised as a farmer and loudly wondering what Emmett's excuse for his size was, which successfully forced the other giant teenager's mouth shut…for all of a microsecond before he was guffawed belligerently to the bemusement of our classmates.

So that's how Eric and I ended up sitting at the lab table beside Rosalie Hale and Emmett Cullen's table as the other tall teenager gossiped about his family, his hobbies (pranks), and the apparent love of his life, Rosalie.

I took it all in stride, but even then, I was still glad to leave the classroom with a hapless shrug of my shoulders even if it was just to move onto my fourth hour class, which was Spanish, that I shared with Jessica who was just coming from Trig.

She eagerly took the desk next to mine, and we took turns laughing as we scanned the handouts and syllabus that the teacher Mrs. Goff provided us with.

We amused ourselves by poking fun at each other's attempts to pronounce the still unfamiliar words, though I knew that I was going to have to put effort into holding myself back from learning the new language much as I'd done with French in my Smallville class. Knowing how boring the term was going to be with someone here to see my growth grasp of a new language, I was reminded again why I refused to take the German and Italian courses in Smallville high.

Spanish ended quickly though, and I was hopeful that with Jessica's witty humor to distract me that the school year wouldn't progress at the snail's pace that I was already used to.

After class, Jessica left the classroom in a hurry, and when I found the lunch room I discovered that she'd saved a table for me with Lauren and their friends already sitting at it.

I'd brought a paper bag of my mom's homemade meat pies and sandwiches, so even without the money to afford some of the items that my new friends had bought from the school lunch menu, I was still very content, maybe even more so because they apparently had a limit to how many items that they could buy, and my alien biology needed more calories then I could get from the school's approved diet plan.

The whole group was desensitized to my big appetite, so didn't even blink at the giant and bulging brown paper bag that I removed from the bottom of my backpack.

I tried to pay attention to the half dozen or so conversations happening around me, but I ended up unintentionally giving my attention to Mike, Eric, Ben and few other boys when they asked me a few questions about my encounters with the Cullen foster children.

That subject also interested the girls, who joined in, and I learned that the three unusually pale teenagers that I met today were the foster children of Doctor Carlisle Cullen and his wife Esme Cullen, who had only recently moved to Forks from a small town in Alaska.

From the sound of things, they were something of a hot topic for gossip in Forks. The students, especially those that belonged of the female variety were mesmerized by the Cullen clan. But once listening to Jessica rant about detestable Edward was, I got the feeling that the Cullen foster children spurned anyone trying to integrate themselves into their happy bubble.

At that moment as Jessica was wrapping up just how pompous and aloof Edward Cullen really was, the very same lad that she was berating walked past us, releasing a chuckle that our whole table could hear. I fought my own smile off, since I didn't want to make Jessica's mortification any worse. Already the girl was beginning to resemble a tomato, and was trying to hide herself in her jacket.

"Maybe you shouldn't take it so personally?" I tried to suggest, giving her a sympathetic look. "Orphans tend to have trouble opening up to people," I explained.

"I guess," Jessica said dourly, looking like someone had kicked her puppy. She smiled thoughtfully, and glanced up through her tangled mass of bangs, asking, "Where'd you learn that kind of stuff?" Jessica's question seemed a thought that the rest of our grouped mirrored; they'd all begun to eagerly lean towards me, anticipating my story.

I shrugged uncomfortably at the attention. "Like to like, I guess."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lauren asked with a roll of her eyes and an annoyed huff from her lips.

"He's an orphan," Angela stated simply, ducking her head when everyone looked at her in surprise.

"But, we've all met Mr. and Mrs. Kent," Mike reasoned slowly, his brow pinched in confusion. Everyone's collective attention returned to me with varying expectations. I gave a resigned sigh.

"Fifteen years ago in Smallville, my hometown was hit by a freak meteor shower. Because of it, a lot of families were devastated by it, including some of my close personal friends and other kids that I grew up with or at least knew of in passing. I was one of the strangest cases, though; my parents found me in a cornfield with no signs of my parents. I was just lucky to be adopted by them," I explained a brief rendition of my past to the group. It was precise, and I'd told it so many times that there was no real infliction in my voice.

"Christ," Mike cursed as I finished my tale, "The more I hear about your hometown, the more I feel as if it's a place that I don't want to visit in my life, _ever_." His claim was met with the general agreement of several others at our table.

I gave a hapless shrug. There wasn't much that I could do about the past, anyway. Even though I still felt guilty about the meteor shower, there was no way I could actually do anything about it, now fifteen years later.

"The meteor shower didn't _just_ bring death and misery though," I said with a grim look in my eyes, "Some farmers got filthy stinking rich off the meteor shower, since the meteors introduced a lot of minerals into the surrounding soil that some farmers still use to grow crops and make considerably massive harvests from…"

"But not yours," Ben asked faintly, a note of fascinated horror on his face. It was the kind of look that you'd get when you could only helplessly watch a car crush on the street in front of you. I shook my head, my eyes downcast.

"My parents say that the only good thing to happen to them that day was finding me," I claimed, and at the interest of the other students I decided to elaborate further to give them some perspective, "My mother has always had difficulties getting pregnant, and all the doctors that my parents went to in the early years of their marriage kept telling them that it was impossible for her to have kids. So they were convinced that they were meant to adopt me when they found me…" I sighed and set my jaw, and everyone were kind enough to take my not-very-subtle hint to drop the subject.

Lying wasn't exactly easy for me, since it went against my morals. But my family has been conditioning me to avoid the truth about my otherworldly origins since the day they discovered me in that cornfield.

My parents learned early on that sometimes the best lies weren't lies at all, but partial truths. If it was the truth, even if just a small part of the truth, then we wouldn't accidentally give away that we weren't saying what really happened. People unintentionally drew conclusions from any information that they could get, whether it was the whole truth or not didn't matter. Sometimes, the best lies were not the ones that you made yourself, but what people thought up when you told them a half truth.

Half truths were perfect for avoiding what we really wanted to keep secret. My father couldn't lie to save his life, but he could tell the truth better than a saint, and spin the truth into his favor as easily as a Catholic priest. I'd learned that art form from him over the course of my life. The only real reasons why anyone even suspected that I knew more than I did or that I had a secret that I didn't want anyone to know was more due to how many times I got involved with crimes perpetrated by the meteor infected and still ended up walking away almost completely unscathed. After all, there was only so much people were willing to ignore as coincidence or chance before they started to suspect the fantastical and ludicrous.

It was just my lucky that fantasy was actually the reality in my situation.

Plus, I was friends with Chloe Sullivan who refused to admit that there were rational explanations for even the most mundane questions. Maybe the only reason why she hadn't put together my secret yet was because of our friendship and her still lingering crush on me.

The others left me to my own thoughts for the rest of lunch. They might have assumed from the previous topic that I would be defensive or moody, but I wasn't really bothered by my situation as an orphan anymore. I had long accepted my status as an orphan, and the only thing that really bothered me about it was that I wasn't a normal orphan, but in fact an intergalactic traveler from a now extinct alien species.

I spent most of the lunch period snacking on my mom's meat pies and people watching. Just as with Smallville, the Fork's high student body split into their individual cliques for lunch, or gathered around groups of friends. The only group that really stood out was the Cullen kids. The four of them had taken up a spot in a corner of the lunch room and would stare down anyone who tried to approach them.

But they didn't seem to be violent. The very pretty and blond Rosalie Cullen was about as standoffish as they got. Emmett, her boyfriend was boisterous and I could hear his laughter all the way across the cafeteria. He had an easy smile, and always seemed to be in motion. Edward, in comparison was much more reserved, speaking in low tones and barely moving more than he needed. But even his smile was easy.

I hadn't met the little girl with the short brunette hair yet, but I'd already heard from my friends about the strange and bubbly Alice Cullen. She was apparently the younger sister of Emmett and Edward, the second of which was her twin. I could see the resemblance. Like her brother Emmett, she was just as animated, much in the same way that Rosalie and Edward were so still and watchful. Emmett seemed like the goofy older brother type, and Edward seemed like the strict, responsible older twin brother who was very protective of his younger sister.

Apparently, Rosalie and Emmett were together, but neither Alice nor Edward seemed inclined to date any other students in Fork's High. I briefly wondered aloud if Edward might be a little on the overprotective side.

When I looked up again, Emmett was roaring with laughter, and Edward was holding his face in his eyes. That wasn't really that strange; I had seen Emmett make Edward lose his usual stoic composure several times since they had joined the rest of the students in the cafeteria. What was surprising was that Alice was watching me with an amused smile, and one of her pencil thin black eyebrows was cocked in supplication.

I felt the heat blossom over my cheeks. For a moment, I was sure that she'd somehow overheard my conversation despite the incredible distance between our two groups, the volume of the rest of the student body that filled the cafeteria to bursting, and how softly I had spoken to Jessica. But then she turned back to Emmett, and said something that made the big teenager roar with laughter again and caused Rosalie to follow Edward's example by rubbing her face in annoyance.

I chuckled humorously, and tried to spend the rest of the lunch period either eating or joining any conversation that my new friends tried to drag me into.

My sixth hour class was Art, which I'd taken on a whim. I wasn't really artistic, since I'd never had such fine control of my strength to do it. But I wanted to try something new, so I'd signed up for the class.

None of my new friends shared art with me, which was another reason I'd picked it. As pleasant as they were, I needed time for solitude and inner reflection or I'd probably go mad.

It was also in my art class where I met… _her_.

She was already sitting at a desk at the back of class, a sketchpad in front of her and a pencil twirling in her white fingers similarly to a baton. I was early, at least early enough to beat the rest of the students to class except for her. So when the teacher greeted me our conversation carried clearly through the silent, near empty room.

"Good afternoon, Mr…?" the teacher asked me kindly. She was an older woman, with kind, dark eyes and a face marked by laugh lines. I noticed when we shook hands that she had the type of colossuses that a person developed from working with paints, brushes, chalks and other materials of the like. I was glad to see she was actuality passionate about her profession.

"Clark Kent, ma'am," I introduced. I noticed the girl on the other side of the room jerk to awareness as I supplied my name. She startled abruptly into a straight packed, tense stance.

"Very good, Mr. Kent," the teacher nodded promptly. "You may call me Mrs. Stevenson or Mrs. S, whichever is to your liking. Now, we have no seating chart for the class, but I have a few projects that require my students to partner with one of their classmates, so if you'd like to sit next to a friend that you wish to partner with than you may do so…" she glanced meaningfully over her shoulder.

I nodded, smiling in understanding. "Of course, I'll try my best, ma'am." She sighed, and nodded her acceptance.

"Thank you, Mr. Kent. I hope you have a pleasant year in my class," she winked. I chuckled at the jinx.

"So do I, ma'am."

No more pleasantries were exchanged. Some of my classmates entered the room as Mrs. Stevenson wrapped up her greeting, so she shuffled quickly over to them. Seeing that I was excused, I tread slowly down the aisle of desks that lead to the lone desk currently occupied by a student, the girl that had already been seated when I had arrived; Alice Cullen.

"Good afternoon, Miss Cullen," I greeted the pale girl with a gentle smile. I pulled out the chair to the desk sitting beside hers, and requested, "May I take this seat, or is it reserved for one of your friends?"

"Don't worry," Alice responded immediately, her lips pursing into a smile and her dark eyes twinkling with laughter, "No one sits with me anyways. Besides, _I_ don't mind if _you_ want to be friends?"

I laughed at her not quite suitable request. It was more of a statement then a question, come to think of it. But it was a nice change of pace. I couldn't see a reason to say no, so I nodded in acceptance.

Sitting in the offered desk, I leaned conspiratorially towards her, which she cottoned onto and leaned eagerly forward to hear what I had to say.

"You'd think with how skittish everyone is around your family that you'd attacked them or something…but I doubt that, for some reason," I winked, which made her smile grow. "Your family seems normal enough to me, if only with a few excusable quirks."

"Quirks?" she grinned in anticipation, as if I was suggesting something scandalous. "How so…?"

So I shifted my eyes from side to side, conveying evasiveness even if I was enjoying the verbal sparring. "Oh, _you_ know…" I anticipated her reaction.

"What? What do I know?" she asked eagerly, narrowing her eyes when my smile widened theatrically.

"You know…the whole 'goth' scene?" I said patiently, amused when she devolved into loud, very unladylike guffaws of laughter. "I've totally seen it all before. Small towns tend to be old fashioned. In my hometown, Smallville, we only had one goth, and he would up working in the police morgue."

"Goths," she shook her head, grinning with mirth in her dark eyes. "I think Emmett will love hearing what the new kid thinks of us, though Edward and Rosalie might not," she declared with a wink, before offering me her hand in greeting.

"I'm Alice Cullen," she said with a smile. I returned it and reached out to grasp her hand.

"Clark Kent, pleased to-" that was the point when my fingers closed around her hand.

In perfect synchronicity, we both gasped in amazement and disbelief, though I'm sure for obviously different reason. Alice's hand felt ice cold in mine, way more so than a normal human would even in the normally chilly air of Forks, Washington. Even if I didn't usually notice things like temperature, this was something abundantly obvious to me.

In comparison, my hand must have felt like I'd stuffed it into a furnace. My usual body temperature was over the hundred and tens, way more than a human. What would someone with hands as cold as hers think of mine?

But there was something else demanding my attention. It felt much more important than any of my concerns about my secret and her health. I felt an electric current pass between our hands, and trust me when I damn well knew what I was talking about. I'd developed a feel for electrical shocks since my freshmen year of house school. These days getting zapped by electricity seemed almost like a daily occurrence to me.

However, as I held her hand, I felt the current's electrical pulses lessen in intensity until the strength had faded into a vague buzzing at the edge of my awareness. I blinked, and realized that I was staring into Alice's dark eyes without really _seeing_ her, and that we were both holding our breath.

I pulled back, confused, which she seemed to share with me. We traded speculative looks, wondering what had just happened between us.

"Uh…p-pleased to meet you," I finally finished my polite introduction, earning a single distracted nod from the girl.

"Yeah…likewise," she replied, and sat back down into her chair with hardly a glance back at me.

I didn't speak with Alice again for the rest of the class, but I was consumed with the thought that I just _had_ to. Something about her made me _want_ to talk to her, but every time I tried to the words would get stuck in my throat and I'd find myself staring at her in a confused daze, trying to understand what had come over me.

Alice very purposely ignored me, with a tight expression on her pale, gorgeous face as she was trying to restrain the impulse to speak. Under the classroom's fluorescent lights the dark shadows under her eyes seemed to grow and make her expression seemed distorted, somehow darker and more violent. It was completely different then the open warmth of earlier. It made her look more hideous, more monstrous, and terrifying. It was a completely alien look on her.

It was cold.

Like her hands.

Somehow, I thought they were connected.

* * *

To Be Continued…?

* * *

Preview: "Alice: 3. Hot"


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